


Marki Balls: Matchmaker

by spikefallsteve (hypersugarroxy)



Category: Game Grumps, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: I regret this, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 15:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4966552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypersugarroxy/pseuds/spikefallsteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark's only been at the matchmaking agency for a few days when suddenly he has to take on all of the clients. Armed with a training manual and file cabinets full of prospective mates, can he make their dreams come true? Or will the clients' become fixated on something unattainable?  (I'm so sorry)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stage Name

**Author's Note:**

> something come up with during a stream with markiplitesaway on tumblr. not sure exactly what pairings are going to happen (if this progresses at all) but there will probably be multiple.

Mark sat down at his desk and adjusted a stack of paper in a wire bin. In three days on the job the papers hadn’t been touched. All Ms. Powers had him doing since he arrived was steam the fluffy lobby carpet and organize a couple of filing cabinets, which he still hadn’t finished and had come in early to do. She’d interrupted him, though: she told him to get to the small back office; she had “an assignment” for him. She’d had a weird smile when she said that...Mark wasn’t sure he liked that.

A small wire bin sat on the desk, filled with paper, a manilla folder on top, a sticky note attached.

_Appointments: Client records - 9-10-15_

Mark opened the folder. A sheet of filler paper sat on top of a small stack of paper. He picked it up and started reading, straining his eyes against the tiny script.

_Hello, kitten! If I don’t happen to see you this morning, I have some special errands to run today. As a result, I’ll be out of the office during all our open hours, and can’t see any clients. Welcome to your first official day of matchmaking!_

Mark set the paper down, his heart racing. They hadn’t gotten around to any training yet; she’d been busy! How did she expect him to take over all operations just like that? Regretting putting “quick learner” and “adaptive” on his resume, he started flipping through the profiles. She’d had a 10am appointment. A photo was attached to each packet with a paper clip. Mark picked the instruction sheet up again.

_You’ll take a look at their gender preferences, astrological sign, interests, and attempt to make a great match! Most of our clients are rather patient, but try to get it right the first time, right? I’ll check in with you in the morning, remember where to put your paperwork at the end of the day! And don’t forget your “stage name”._

Right...he looked at his name tag, hanging on a lanyard on the doorknob to the tiny office. “Marki Balls.” He’d put it down as a joke; she loved it and handed him the I.D. the previous afternoon.

_If you have any questions, we can discuss them when I call you, or refer to the manual (I trust you have it!) Good luck, kitten! - Ms. Kitty_

Slowly beginning to rethink his life choices, Mark took the name tag from the doorknob and threw it around his neck. He leaned against the door. He needed this job, and people were counting on this. So he couldn’t just leave. He’d hate to embarrass the company like that; even if it meant embarrassing himself, he’d have to do it. He looked at the clock. Quarter after 9...may as well finish sorting the filing cabinet.

Ten to 10, Mark heard the tiny bell attached to the customer entrance ring and footsteps come up to the front desk, followed by an uncertain “hello?” Mark popped up like toast from under the desk, startling the man.

“Hi. Uh...you’re the 10am appointment, right?”

The man looked Mark up and down. “Yeah, I have an appointment with Ms. Powers?”

“Well, Ms. Powers isn’t in today, I’ll be working with you today. My name is Marki Balls,” Mark internally cringed at the enthusiasm he said it with as he threw out his hand. “I’ll just take you to the office, back here,” he said, leading the man to the back office. “It’s a little cramped, sorry about that.”

The man took the seat in front of the desk. Mark grabbed the manilla folder, set aside Ms. Kitty’s note and picked up the first profile. “Ok...Mr. Hanson, is it?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I call you Arin, says your name’s Arin.”

“If you want to.”

“Ok...so…” Mark held the paper up to his face, pretending to scrutinize it while hiding the perplexion he couldn’t keep out of his expression. Drawing blanks, he threw the paper down and, staying standing, addressed Arin. “So Arin, tell me about yourself. What brings you here to our fine establishment?”

“Well...I’m single?”

“And you’re...unhappy with that?”

Arin gave Mark a confused look. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

Beat.

“Well, _of course_! And that’s why it’s my job to find you a...say, what’re you into?”

“As far as? Look, man, I filled out the paperwork last week, it should all be in there.”

Mark felt his face grow hot and looked over the profile again.

“I see...you’re into men and women. Dark hair and eyes a plus. An Aquarius...You work as an animator, that’s interesting. And your interests include...video games, there’s the animation again, and also music, that’s really cool.”

“Glad you think so.” Arin gave Mark a small smile. They made eye contact for a split second. Mark coughed and picked up a pen, mostly to just have something to do with his hands.

“Alright, then...So, I have some profiles you can look at.”

Arin chuckled as he took a small stack of unsorted profiles from Mark. “Your coworkers wouldn’t happen to be in here, would they?” he joked.

Mark opened his mouth as he heard the small bell go off in the lobby again. “I’ll be right back,” he said, skirting the desk and the question and heading out to the desk. 


	2. The New Client

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark discovers very quickly just how little a clue he has about the workings of a matchmaking agency. Nothing like some OTJ training.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> clearly i didn't regret this enough to not crank out another chapter at 1 in the morning.

Mark took two steps out the door, spun on his heel and re-entered the office. Arin watched him lean toward the desk, grab the manila folder and walk right back out. Mark flipped through the profiles on his way. Each had a sticky note attached to it with their appointment time on it in bold. The appointment after Arin’s wasn’t going to be until after noon; it was barely past 10. Wondering who showed up that early for their appointment, Mark rounded the corner slowly and approached the desk.

A young man leaned against it, watching one of the pictures in the unsettlingly pink lobby as though direct eye contact would keep it at bay. The pen on a beaded cord was hanging off the edge and a creepy beckoning cat bobblehead was bobbing. Mark walked up to the man, who caught him out of the corner of his eye. He snapped his attention to Mark. Mark opened the folder, flicked his eyes down to look at the photos. No; no; definitely not her. Fearing he’d lost something important, he smiled (somewhat awkwardly) at the client, who simply nodded back and offered a short “Hi.”

“Hello,” Mark said. He set the folder down and held out his hand; the man took it. “Do you have an appointment?” he asked, uncertainty unable to be contained.

“Ah, no. My first time here, actually,” the other man said, turning his body to face Mark.

“Oh, great!” Mark said brightly, the weight of having misplaced or forgotten something falling off his chest. He put on an over-the-top smile, hoping that would break up the awkwardness he’d caused. “In that case, welcome to our dating agency! My name is Mark!” A pause. “E Balls!” he added. The man furrowed his brow in confusion; Mark held up his name tag and the expression changed to one of comprehension, resting on weirded-out. Mark let the tag drop and held out his hand.

The new client took it firmly.

“Great. Ok, if you can just wait here, I’ll get the forms for you to fill out, it’s all basic stuff, and the waiver, I’ll get your photo for records when I come back, because I’m actually with someone right now, so I’ll come get you...as soon as I can.” Mark opened the file cabinet with the blank paperwork and handed it to . He took the folder and gave  a small polite smile before returning to the back office.

Arin had three profiles spread out over the desk. He’d turned his head around when Mark re-entered.

“Forget something else?”

“Ah, no. No, we’re good. So,” Mark pulled Arin’s profile back out and reacquainted himself with the information. “Ok; what are we looking at here?”

“...Mostly these two,” Arin pointed at two profiles. One was of a man with very large fluffy hair and a smile that made you both trust him entirely and made you want to keep your distance at the exact same time. Mark could see what Arin saw completely, at least at the superficial level. The other for a young woman with long dark hair.

“Ok,” Mark said taking them both from him. He gave the profiles a quick once-over. Leigh and Suzanne...He set them aside, took the third profile off the desk and got up to put it away. He didn’t catch the name on it but he did recognize the man in the profile photo, as he’d just been in yesterday to see Ms. Powers. Putting it back in the stack he returned to the profiles Arin had picked.

“Where do you want to begin?”

“Maybe we could start with her.”

“Alrighty, let me see here…” He looked her over. She was into men, a good start. She liked eyes lighter than Arin’s but looks were always negotiable...a Cancer...She liked fashion, cosplay (which Mark thought was sort of redundant) and cats. Pretty basic, but that’s all they ask for. And she apparently did part-time modelling. Interesting.

“Alright then. So, how this works…” Mark said matter-of-factly, stopping short. This works...how?? He flicked his eyes up to a clock on the wall that actually read 7:28. “I have to go check on something quickly, excuse me,” he said hastily, edging around Arin to another filing cabinet, upon which rested the training manual. He grabbed it and exited the office, flicking through the book and tripping over a table against the back wall, knocking over a vase. Water soaked the carpet but the vessel itself appeared unscathed.

“You alright over there?” The new client called from the lobby. Mark jumped slightly and looked up at the concerned face.

“Uh. Yeah. Yeah, we’re fine here. I’ll clean that later. How’s the paperwork coming?

“I don’t understand most of these questions. What is ‘spicy’ versus ‘sweet’?”

“Ah. That means....” Mark paused and opened the manual, feverishly flipping through pages. He rested on “personality profile” and skimmed the page. “Ok, that’s the personality assessment, it helps us, find out, what you’re like. It’s for office use, we have to set an appointment to fill it out. According to - I mean...yeah,” Mark said defeatedly; the man had seen him, no point in hiding it. “According to the book, it’ll take about an hour to complete and go through, get a read on you.”

“Ok.”

“I’m actually going to be finishing up with this first client shortly, but then I have some phone calls to make, but! my next appointment isn’t until...noonish, I believe, so once I’m done with this appointment I can get you on the paper assessment, I mean, depending on your schedule.”

“Yeah, I have time if you do.”

“Alright, then.” Mark held out his hand; the man took it and went to sit down. Mark took the paperwork off of the counter and picked the manual back up, flipped to the section on “procedures” and made his way half-blindly to the supply closet for a rag.

“Ok,” Mark said, returning to the office over five minutes later with a finger wedged in between pages like a bookmark. Arin had picked one of the profiles up - Leigh’s - and had been presumably reading it over. “How this works,” Mark returned to his seat and started reading: “is I’m going to give Suzanne a call, I’ll set an appointment with her, talk over your profile and see if she’s willing to meet up with you. If she is - you have to give me, like, ideal times, and she’s going to have to tell me what times are best for her, I’ll put the two together, set you two up with a reservation somewhere and then you go on a date. We have these earpieces, it’s all very escargot - wait, no. Espionage, that’s it! And I help you out with her. Work for you?”

“I mean, I’ve been on dates before, why can’t I just ask her out myself?”

“Well, because that’s procedure, it’s what my manual says to do. I’m actually willing to bet it’s against procedure because I don’t know any woman who’d want to be called by some random guy she never agreed we could give her number to. Unless she signed something…” Mark thumbed through the table of contents once more. He felt Arin’s eyes on him the whole time. “Maybe it’s on the fine print of her paperwork…”

“You know what, I’ll let you handle it. I’ll wait for your call.” Arin rose from his seat; Mark felt his job performance drop.

“Alright, then, I’ll probably give you a call later tonight!” Mark smiled as comfortably as he could and held out his hand. Arin gave Mark a look at his words and took it, making very direct eye contact. Mark broke it and felt himself turn red. Arin left. Mark stood there, wondering vaguely about company policy and if he could make a profile himself. He shook the thought out of his head and picked up the manual again, turning to the section for setting up new clients and giving himself a crash course.


End file.
